After his fifth breath, the woman coughed and opened her eyes. Coyle hoisted her into a sitting position and held her while she coughed and vomited. Her face was pale, her eyes struggling to focus.

“My name’s Martin Coyle,” Coyle said. “I’m a police officer.”

The woman breathed heavily. Water dripped from her hair down across her face. Her sweatshirt was soaked, her bare legs scratched and smeared with mud.

Behind her, Partridge said something to Woodhouse. The side of his head was wet with blood.

The woman turned to see Partridge. The cord, still wrapped tight around his wrists, lay across his body.

Two hikers helped Woodhouse to his feet. Gun still leveled at Partridge, Woodhouse told the hikers to call 911. In front of the onlookers, a teenage boy took photos.

The woman tipped back her head and closed her eyes. Red, crisscrossed bruises marked her neck. For a moment, with her eyes shut, she looked like the dead girls in the forensic photos.

Heaving a breath, she opened her eyes.

Coyle watched her eyes blink and focus on him. They stared, as if seeing something new.

“Good,” he said softly. “Good.”

(ii)

(FRIDAY, 1:10 P.M.)

Thackrey pointed to the chair beside him. “Let’s talk shop.”

Eden sat on the edge of the cushion. Her hand trembled as she put the wineglass on the table.

Thackrey smiled. He took her hand and ran a thumb slowly across its back. “You know why I’m here?”

“Because I said the thing this morning about Reggie Semple.” Her voice was a whisper.

“You were testing me, weren’t you? Well, guess what? You were right. Unfortunately, it’s not always a good thing to be right.”

He let go of her hand and sat back on the sofa. From his pocket, he took a pill bottle. He unscrewed the cap and poured several into his mouth. “How’d you know?”

Eden tried to gauge Thackrey’s attention level. His eyes darted around the room. Was he alert or just processing the pills? She imagined jumping on Thackrey, ripping the gun from his hand. An even bet had her rising from the chair and being shot in the stomach. “When we went through Elise Durand’s things, we found a book of Keats poetry. She wrote lots of stuff in the margins. But one note puzzled me. Three times, where the word ‘queen’ appears, Elise circled it and wrote ‘murder’ in the margin.”

“Elise loved her poetry.”

“Then when we ID’d you, I saw an entry in your file. The San Francisco homicide detectives questioned you at the time of Reggie Semple’s disappearance. Reggie’s short for Regina, which means queen. Elise must have found or heard something that convinced her you killed Semple. You had to kill Elise because she knew. I wasn’t sure until this morning in your house. When I said that thing about Reggie, you stopped smiling for the first time.”